Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Multicultural web TV in Italy

The face and faces of modern-day Italy have changed considerably over the past 30 years. From a country of emigrants, Italy has become a country of immigrants. This is the Italy you meet in the streets, on the trains, at the supermarket…but not on the television, unless you’re watching the crime news.

That’s the view shared by the staff of Crossing TV and Lookout TV, two web television channels that reflect a growing dissatisfaction with what’s on offer on national television stations. While Italy’s ethnic minorities get a bad press, so too does its youth, according to Crossing TV’s founder, Silvia Storelli. “They aren’t painted in a very good light by Italian mass media: drugs, binge drinking, reckless driving after nights out clubbing, social problems. They never talk about young people’s passions, their creativity, things like that. It’s simply missing.”
The Bolognese filmmaker, who set up the web channel in her home town in February 2008, proudly describes it as the first cross-generational and cross-cultural channel in Italy. She says the two go hand-in-hand since Italy’s youth is now full of diversity. “National channels just don’t cater for them. You can’t fail to notice young people’s decreasing interest in what’s on offer, and their growing preference for the computer screen over the television screen.” Read the full story at
Doha Centre

Video Crossing TV
The well known Senegalese documentary and filmmaker Fatou Kande Senghor was invited to Bologna to give a workshop (in July) at the Italian theatre company "ITC Teatro di San Lazzaro".

Crossing TV, the video channel of the "Nuove Generazioni", interviewed her at the grand finale of the workshop and also made a small impression of the food and the African sounds.